Chamber and committees

I thank Jackie Dunbar for bringing the debate to the chamber. As someone who can still smell his Irish granny’s soda bread, I associate myself with Jackie Dunbar’s comments. I think that I am making everyone in the chamber hungry for their lunch.

I am extremely pleased to stand in support of global intergenerational week 2022, a campaign that, as we have heard, stresses the value of all of our generations in society, and a campaign that highlights the benefits of learning from and supporting one another—a measure that is integral to strengthening our communities and tackling social isolation.

Since the start of the pandemic, public health messaging has emphasised the importance of social distancing, but for hundreds of thousands of Scots who live alone and rely on community social support, a secondary, quieter public health crisis has surfaced, and that is loneliness.

We know that loneliness is a public health crisis, as it significantly increases the risk of stress, anxiety and depression, and it doubles the risk of dementia. In fact, as we have heard from colleagues already, long-term loneliness is as damaging to our health as smoking 15 cigarettes per day. Although loneliness can occur at any and all stages of life, most triggers tend to congregate in later life due to factors such as retiring from work, being bereaved, experiencing illness and children moving away from home.

During the pandemic, the effects of social isolation were often felt most acutely by our older generation, many of whom fell into high-risk brackets and, as such, were forced to not only isolate but shield completely. For the rest, as a result of Covid regulations more generally, most mechanisms of social support, such as in-person community groups, were closed.

In common with colleagues across the chamber, during the lockdown period, I saw generations coming together in a way that perhaps I had not in the past. That could have been something as simple as young neighbours looking in on their older neighbours, to make sure that they had their shopping in or had their prescription picked up. There was a real willingness to go across the garden gate and have a conversation with someone, perhaps in a way that had not happened before.

There were also formal examples of that in my West Scotland region, in Renfrewshire. The intergenerational project and creative writing programme poetic pathways worked with older adults living independently in sheltered housing and young people from schools to provide an outlet for both generations to exchange their feelings and experiences during the lockdown. Pupils at local schools periodically wrote letters and cards, facilitating connections between the generations at a time when many were shielding and had experienced little or no social interactions. That had the effect of breaking down the stigmas that are often attached to both older and younger people, and it created instead a sense of partnership between generations through which life experiences could be exchanged and commonalities shared.

That project has moved on further, and poetic pathways has now created an interactive poetic walk down national cycle network route 7 in Renfrewshire, which runs from Paisley through Johnstone. Two schools that were involved in that, Glencoats primary school in Paisley and Fordbank primary school in Johnstone, are very proud of the work that they have done along with sheltered housing residents to put poetry onto that path for everyone to read. They won an award from Generations Working Together for their use of place and space, which absolutely has to be celebrated.

The third sector and voluntary organisations continue to work tirelessly to combat loneliness. In the Parliament, we all know that we need to do more to provide sustainable funding and support for those organisations. Undoubtedly, age-based discrimination and loneliness will often result from wider pressures in our society, not least within our health service.

Global intergenerational week is about having important conversations about recognising the value of every generation in Scotland and taking a next step towards continuing to reconnect our generations post Covid-19.

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the potential impact on its Covid recovery strategy of its future plans for contact tracing. (S6O-00997)

I have previously raised in the chamber with the First Minister and the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care the importance of ensuring that test and protect staff have their contracts honoured and are suitably redeployed, so that we do not lose the expertise and knowledge that they have gained during the pandemic. Does the cabinet secretary agree that, in learning from Covid-19 and as part of the recovery plan, we should ensure that contact tracing systems are evaluated and refined to incorporate lessons learned, and that those systems should be maintained within the national health service so that they can be rapidly activated in case of further outbreaks or of future epidemic illness or public health emergencies?

I thank my regional colleague for that intervention. There is clearly concern about the pace at which the devices are being rolled out. Last year and during the lockdown period, it was fundamentally important that young people could get access to digital devices, so that they could learn from home. I know from my experience on East Renfrewshire Council that the roll-out of money from the Scottish Government has been slow and patchy, and I think that we would all like to see progress being made on that. I hope that the minister will be able to say something in her concluding remarks about what progress the Scottish Government intends to make on ensuring that the policy is delivered. It is all very well saying that there will be a device for every child, but we need to know when that is going to happen.

As has already been said, many of the policies are just headlines and have not been delivered, and timescales are slipping. We know about what is happening with free lunches, but, in many local authority areas, breakfast clubs were cut years ago and local authorities have not been given appropriate capital funding to deliver increased dining space. We talk about free instrumental tuition, but many bands and orchestras have already folded and work to reach the poorest children with music tuition stopped. As we have just heard, the Government announced the provision of a digital device for every child, but hundreds are still waiting. Further, council family learning services and outreach have been decimated.

It is clear that we need to look at the fundamentals in order to tackle poverty in our schools and in our communities. We need childcare that supports people to access learning and the labour market, with councils and partner providers fully funded to deliver with the genuine flexibility that was promised and is required. We need wraparound childcare not just in the early years, but also in primary, before and after school, where we know that the cost of childcare can be exorbitant.

Given the context of Covid-19, we need a recovery that works for everyone. That means universal availability of holiday clubs and extracurricular activities to help all our children and young people bounce back, particularly in terms of their mental health and wellbeing.

All evidence shows that addressing issues of poverty during childhood and in schools vastly increases the life chances of those raised in low income households. Poverty touches all areas of life and Scottish Labour believes that fighting to end poverty should be the key priority of everything that we do in this Parliament, and that begins with our youngest citizens.

Does Ross Greer accept that, in large authorities with expanding school populations, such as East Renfrewshire and East Dunbartonshire, there will be a requirement for further capital funding to ensure that school lunches can be provided within lunch time? I am thinking, in particular, of Mearns primary school in Newton Mearns, where there are upwards of 1,500 pupils to be fed over the lunch period.

Will Elena Whitham give way?

My point is that councils have gone above and beyond to help to deliver much of the agenda that we are talking about. Labour-led North Ayrshire Council, in my region, has invested in a scheme directed at tackling the cost of the school day, with £500,000 already invested to overcome the key financial barriers to participation at school for children from low-income houses. That involves looking at delivering equal access to food, clothing and digital resources in order to poverty proof the school day. I know that we have heard from other colleagues about where that is happening in other parts of the country, too.

However, those councils are struggling to deliver all that in the face of years of cuts from the Scottish Government. The Government’s motion speaks about the removal of core curriculum charges and about myriad initiatives. However, much of that is simply replacing money that has already been stripped from education budgets, as we have heard already.

Like the two previous speakers, I declare an interest, perhaps for the last time. I am a serving councillor in East Renfrewshire Council.

I am pleased to contribute to the debate and begin by praising the excellent work of our schools and the many dedicated staff who work in them day in, day out. Schools are so much more than just places of learning. I am sure that we can all agree that, in our communities, schools are at the very centre of supporting children and young people, and their families, to grow and thrive in a safe and supported environment. I am sure that we have all had experience of the wider role that schools can play in bringing communities together and meeting people where they are, in order to work as hard as possible with them to respond to their needs. That means all children and all families, and a relentless focus on breaking down the barriers to achieving the full potential of every learner.

In preparing for the debate, I have been thinking about the genuine transformative power that a young person’s experiences in and around school life can have on them. My mum taught in a primary school for 40 years and still speaks about many of the young people she taught and supported to experience the world both inside and outwith the classroom: a child has the opportunity to learn a musical instrument and performs for their classmates for the first time; a child learns to swim and takes to the deep end on their own for the first time; or a child takes a school trip away from home for the first time, to Iona or on an Outward Bound adventure, and wonders at history or nature.

It may seem simple, but there is power in those things. As the Child Poverty Action Group has pointed out in its work on in-school poverty, children are missing out on having fun. It is more fundamental than that, though. Children are often missing out on being themselves and learning about themselves. That is why I commend the work done by CPAG on supporting schools to think about how to make those experiences as accessible and cost neutral as possible—something that teachers such as my mum and many others have been doing for many years.

However, we know that with diminishing financial resources that is becoming harder and harder. We know that it often falls to staff, parent councils, charities, churches and others to help plug the gap. We also know that the costs of the fundamentals of the school day—uniforms, physical education kit, food, equipment and digital access—all continue to rise. That is why it is right that the Government has worked with COSLA on increasing the school clothing grant and expanded the provision of free school meals.

However, it is clear that councils have also gone above and beyond in extremely difficult circumstances. Labour-led North Lanarkshire Council has combated holiday hunger with club 365 and has provided the first-ever clothing grant for nursery children. I am sure that Bob Doris either forgot to mention or did not get around to mentioning North Lanarkshire Council, and I will not mention all the communities in North Lanarkshire that are benefiting from that holiday hunger programme—I will let other colleagues do that.

In politics, it is often easy to give something a title and forget about the magnitude and the reality of what lies behind those words. We have already heard today about austerity, but that really means falling standards of living for the poorest in our society through Government cuts. The Government speaks of a budget of choices, but what it really means is cuts to the moneys that are available to local government to educate our children, lift the bins and fill the potholes.

I fear that the expression “cost of living crisis” is becoming another one over which there is much hand wringing by Scotland’s Government but little real action. We know the reality of the crisis: sleepless nights for thousands of people about how they will pay their bills, ensure that their children have enough to eat and get to work as the cost of petrol and public transport goes up and up.

We cannot allow the cost of living crisis to become another phrase that is timeworn by the inaction of the UK and Scottish Governments. As we emerge from the pandemic, during which many Scots experienced a collapse in their earnings, thousands of people who were just getting by are being propelled into poverty and precarity. The crisis continues to devastate family finances and the UK and Scottish Governments are simply not doing enough and are not focused on the real needs.

Despite promising cheaper energy bills during the 2016 Brexit referendum, the Tories have alternated between being completely silent on the crisis and being completely tone deaf. Despite the crisis, they have hiked up taxes for working people and dished out temporary loans—a heat-now, pay-later measure that only exacerbates the issues in the long term.

Let us not forget that the SNP Government has presided over the crisis in Scotland. It recently nodded through increases in water charges and increased rail fares at a time when families are least able to afford them. In response to urgent calls for support, the SNP and Green Government has failed to use the extent of the powers that it has and instead has offered one-off payments equating to less than £4 a week. That is the equivalent of one single off-peak ticket from Paisley to Glasgow and, with current fares, it is hardly a measure that will soften the blow.

While Scottish families are choosing between heating and eating, Government-owned Scottish Water and its subsidiaries are sitting on a cash mountain of more than £500 million. Scottish Labour’s amendment demands that that cash mountain is used to deliver a rebate of £100 to every household on their water charges.

As I come to the end of a decade as a local councillor, I have been reflecting on the importance of local government in delivering targeted support to those who would otherwise remain in crisis. Our local councils are quickly becoming the last line of defence in the cost of living emergency. The amazing people I have had the privilege of working with in local government are being starved of cash and forced to make unpalatable decisions. We need more money, advice and rights services, more funding for Citizens Advice, more community resilience groups and more support to help people pay their bills.

Copying the Tories by giving people a £150 council tax rebate will not cut it. If the Government is serious about tackling the cost of living, it must properly fund local government to deliver the services that people rely on, and give people real financial help that they can spend in their local communities to build up local economies. I point to the innovative work that is being done in Labour councils across Scotland, such as the community wealth-building agenda in North Ayrshire in my region, and the club 365 holiday hunger programme in North Lanarkshire—once again, councils being the last line of defence.

It is clear that, as my colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy articulated, Scottish Labour has a plan at every level of government to tackle the crisis and help people through it. It is also clear that the situation is grave for people across Scotland, and it will take more than warm words to heat homes and put food on the table.

Key to many of our questions this morning is the issue of scrutiny and the on-going assessment of the work that has been done in order to deliver change. What future work on health and social care is Audit Scotland currently planning to undertake?